Scouting Made Easy - Announcing the FIRST Scouting Network

[Adam Richards]

Hey everyone,

I'm Adam Richards from team 1341, head coder for FIRST Scouting Network (FSN). For those who don't know, the FIRST Scouting Network is a scouting application developed between several teams to fill a gap in regional scouting. FSN is an open application, that when deployed at a regional, is able to be viewed by any team that has a laptop to either plug or connect wirelessly to a router.

Many previous attempts to create such a database available at more than one regional have been limited simply due to the lack of resources by one single team, but with the combined resources of teams throughout the entire FIRST community, FSN is able to provide aid to all teams that either need a solution for scouting, whether your team is a small one without enough students to do scouting, or if you have a medium or larger sized team and you want an easier way to scout for 2006. All teams are both allowed and encouraged to use our services at the regionals our software is available at this year (we are currently planning to cover NJ, VCU, Florida, Peachtree, Boston, and Vegas at the minimum).

The features this year are as follows:

For everyone:
--Open Access - any team at the regional can view data posted to the server through their web browser
--Statistical Analysis - each match that is recorded updates statistics on the server showing details over teams
--Pit Scouting Reports - every team can submit pit scouting reports based on a number of templates for any team at the regional
--Photo Gallery - photos for any robot can be uploaded to the server for retrieval later
--Video Perspectives - custom match video from multiple perspectives is available at many regional locations that FSN is hosted
--Match Schedule - an easy-to-access match schedule shows which matches your team is in so you don't have to search the entire pit for the list

For the server owner:
--Admin Panel - an easy administration panel allows the server owner to easily change options for the regional
--Censoring - if a person were to submit false or inflamatory information, the admin or an appointed moderator can change or remove the data
--Easy Installation - Just unzip the package, hit run, and you're all set up to start scouting
--Support for any operating system - Whether you use Debian, Windows XP, or OS X, you'll easily be able to run FIRST Scouting Network. We will have packages available for all major operating systems on our website for anyone to be able to download and run at a regional.


Stay tuned for more information in the coming two weeks and a fully-functional demo! If you would like to be a regional host for FIRST Scouting Network, please e-mail me at adam.m.richards@gmail.com. Thanks!

[Beth Sweet]

Link Adam???? ;)

[blue_crew]

sounds great. ill talk to my team about it and maybe i can find a team member to be a regional host at the davis/sacramento regional.
looking forward to more information.

[amos229]

how can we link to this great oppurtunity, also will the info be posted outside of the stadium such as online to be viewed at home or in the hotel?

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Will the data be available beyond the regional dates?

For example, I may want a picture from one of the regionals in my team's scouting database at Championship, or at a later regional, or perhaps access a team's average goals or something. Any thoughts?

[Adam Richards]

Will the data be available beyond the regional dates?

For example, I may want a picture from one of the regionals in my team's scouting database at Championship, or at a later regional, or perhaps access a team's average goals or something. Any thoughts?Yes, all data will be available through our domain (http://www.firstscouting.net/ <-- There's no website there yet, but there will be in the days following kickoff), and we will also have an overall view at the entire FIRST world, showing statistics across all regionals so you can get a complete view of a team.

There are also a few different ways data will be posted. At regionals where internet access is available, it will be syncronised several times throughout the day to our main server. At regionals where no internet access is available, the hosts will try to upload the data as soon as they can get an internet connection to upload the statistics.

Also, I'd like to thank Ben Blount of team 1746 (Forsyth Alliance) for hosting our webspace and bandwidth!

[Mike]

What license is the data/images provided under? Might I suggest the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)?

[phrontist]

I hereby proclaim that FSN will be at Chesapeke hosted by Vae Victus.

[Ian Curtis]

Once people volunteer to host regionals can you tell us Adam?

[Adam Richards]

What license is the data/images provided under? Might I suggest the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)?More info about this will be released shortly after kickoff.
Once people volunteer to host regionals can you tell us Adam?I'm actually going to put up some forums on the domain in a day or two so all this information can be recorded and kept track of.

[Adam Richards]

Hey everyone, just wanted to give a little update.

Forums are open on http://www.firstscouting.net/. On it, there are threads available for you to discuss regional logistics, if you wish. This will probably be our primary method of mass-communication, so please register so we'll be able to send informational emails out during build season

Thanks!

[GhostInTheShell]

maybe a cool thing will be like if its avalible on the web, you can have a list of competitions you are going to that way you can for say click the competition and not have to search the entire database

[Conor Ryan]

Just so everyone knows, most regionals are looking for some help

So..........heres a list of regionals that are yet to get any help

BAE
Pacific Northwest
Arizona
St. Louis
Buckeye
Pittsburg
Finger Lakes
UTC
Midwest
Detroit
Wisconsin
SPBLI
Waterloo
New York City
Las Vegas
Lone Star
Colorado
Palmetto
Philadelphia
Greater Toronto
We got some, but we want more! Imagine what a source this could be if we get even half of the regionals covered, so even if your regional isn't one of the one listed, or you don't have the manpower to cover a regional yourself that doesn't mean you can't help, you can team up with someone else and scout together. Maybe you just have hardware that could be used let us know and post on the forums. The only way we can get this to work is if we have you!

[Rohan_DHS]

i already pm'ed and emailed Adam about the GTA (Greater Toronto) regional, but havent heard back yet :S i think it might be my SMTP Server :S oh well, but yeah, 1620 is interested in hosting at the GTA...

if you need to contact me: rohank9@gmail.com <preferred> or rohan@teamrobolution.com

[buss]

Is it open source?

[Reyner]

What is it written in?

[Adam Richards]

i already pm'ed and emailed Adam about the GTA (Greater Toronto) regional, but havent heard back yet :S i think it might be my SMTP Server :S oh well, but yeah, 1620 is interested in hosting at the GTA...

if you need to contact me: rohank9@gmail.com <preferred> or rohan@teamrobolution.comFor some reason, a bunch of my emails in gmail are going into the Junk folder (many of the emails people sent in had the same title in a short period of time, and the spam filters went a bit crazy), so if you could post on our forums at http://www.firstscouting.net/ in the GTR thread, it'll be much easier for me to be able to contact everyone interested. Thanks!

Is it open source?The data gathered on it will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org), and the software code will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. The reason for the higher restriction placed on the software is simply due to the need to be able to offer technical support for each team that offers a running copy at a regional, and without standardized code, that would become impossible, as we probably wouldn't be able to diagnose what kind of problem it would be within the short amount of time that computer, software, and network setup has to be completed.

The attribution on the code will be given to those who write a specific page, and the attribution on the data will be given to the person who wrote it (though their name will only be visible to administrators incase accidental information is inserted, to protect them from any non-gp actions that possibly could occur).

What is it written in?HTML/PHP with a MySQL database backend.

[Babyhueyhnx]

whats the deal. i would like to help but haven't gotten any response to my post from 01/07. I'm going to the Philly regional and Trenton regional. i posted under the name psloat. i would appreciated it (and i think others would too) if you could give us a clue as to what is going on.

[107Dexter]

when will we know more abou tthe software and if we can host?

[Adam Richards]

Hey guys, sorry for the delays; due to some unforseen inner-team problems (the absolute failure of our original drivetrain design last Saturday and the need to dedicate more resources to the robot to finish it on time), the release will be a little delayed.

Bjorn Westergard from 1418 (Vae Victus) is designing a new layout for FSN, and we expect this to be ready around ship (around Feb 21). The coding is nearly completed, and I'll be ready to let on testers with special passwords for our hosting teams when the layout is completed and the code is integrated into it. A week or two later, I will unrestrict the software and allow the general public to access the demo to familiarize themselves with the software for use at the regionals they plan to visit this year.

If any other teams are interested in being regional hosts, please post in the appropriate thread on our forums at http://www.firstscouting.net/forum/index.php.

Thanks for the patience!

[dhitchco]

In addition to the scouting systems, I created a spreadsheet that lists every ream that is registered at one or more regional. It's sortable by team number, city, etc. Enjoy and use for scouting

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/papers.php?s=&action=single&paperid=605

[synth3tk]

Hey, I usually don't bring up old threads, especially looking at this date, but this idea sounded like it could've taken off pretty far. Whatever happened to this? Lack of interest? Too busy to continue?

[Guy Davidson]

Sorry about the plug, but we at team 8 are actually working on something somewhat similar to tackle the same problem. We'll be coming out with more details as we have them.

[synth3tk]

I'm just trying to find some sort of system to use this year, and I'm really hoping the DS system pulls through, but if you have one that sounds promising I'm willing to wait and see. Does your team have a site or forum?

[AndyB]

I'm just trying to find some sort of system to use this year, and I'm really hoping the DS system pulls through, but if you have one that sounds promising I'm willing to wait and see. Does your team have a site or forum?

If you have a few PDA's we are working on a system for those.